Students Walk Out After Losing Editorial Control of U. of Georgia Newspaper

The student editorial staff of The Red & Black, a newspaper long run by students at the University of Georgia, walked out on Wednesday to protest the appointment of a nonstudent as editorial director, Online Athens reported. Ed Morales, who had been the paper’s editorial adviser, was given the new title, along with full editorial control, in a decision by the paper’s Board of Directors. Kent Middleton, head of the journalism department at the university and a member of the Board of Directors, outlined that change and others—including the hiring of new nonstudent marketing and product managers, a multimedia director, a business manager, and a creative director—in an e-mail last week.

The former student editors have set up a blog called Red & Dead, where the former editor in chief, Polina Marinova, posted a statement saying she and other staffers had come under increasing pressure in recent weeks from newly hired managers “with veto power over students’ decisions.”